Hopscotch Reading Room at LISBETH: returning to where i've never been with cát nguyên

About the artist: 
cát nguyên is a queer, non-binary storyteller. As an experimental poet, performance artist & wanderer of worlds, cát nguyên searches for solace beyond society’s borders & bones. They are a diasporic dreamer & living manifestation of the U.S. War in Vietnam. Through their art, cát nguyên is in conversation with love, grief, intergenerational trauma & healing, queerness, relationships, discrimination & migration. They aspire to transform poetry into an immersive experience rather than one limited to reading. In doing so, cát nguyên hopes to dismantle the boundaries of, and ultimately revolutionize, poetry. cát nguyên is best known for their unique performance style, cảm diễn (emotional performance in Vietnamese), because of its deeply expressive nature in which cát nguyên connects with not only their own soul, but also the audience’s. Their performances conjure a dramatic spell of poetry, movement, and sound. cát nguyên’s performance practice is influenced by Vietnamese spirituality, folklore & ancestral wisdom, and experiments with elements of Vietnamese traditional music, theater & narrative forms.